Japanese Releases News, Japanese Releases Features - Page 8 of 17

Breaking new ground with the DSi camera

Although rumours abound of a motion-enabled successor to the DS being readied for unveiling in the near future, it seems some developers just couldn't wait and decided to attempt the same kind of game mechanics afforded by accelerometers utilising the second camera present on the DSi. The system is known as...

A touching game of combat

Tom Create's follow-up to the cheap-and-cheerful space-based take on Dig Dug II is Touchpen Wars, an arcade-style shooter that's also offered at the budget price of 200 Points. Don't be fooled by the title – it's not a game laden with sentiment, but uses flicks and taps of the stylus to launch projectiles from gun emplacements at the bottom of the lower screen towards..

More budget puzzling fun from Suzak

Vertex is another take on the puzzle genre in the G.G. Series and like Energy Chain it's a competent and fairly original concept, but not necessarily an addictive one. Players move a small glowing green dot at the bottom which is projecting a guide line to the top of the screen. The object is to press buttons to light up the correct number of darkened vertices..

Racing punch-up, Zombie Wonderland and karate for the Wii; learning, canoeing, dogfighting, puzzling and shogi on the DSi

The Virtual Console Arcade gets a surprise release (always nice) and there's a couple of interesting WiiWare games to tide over Wii owners; add in some intesting titles on the DSi and you get a pretty good week for Nintendo downloading overall. WiiWarePokosuka Racing (500pts -..

A refreshing spin on the classic Tetris concept

Sakasa Drops is the second DSiWare effort from Tecmo and like Gyaku Shooting is played holding your DSi upside down with the touchscreen up top. It's a novel gimmick that literally conveys the fact that the tables are being turned on some familiar gameplay. This game most strongly echoes the classic puzzle game Tetris with a couple of twists: players..

It's Star Force in a world gone mad!

Tecmo have finally dipped their toes in the DSiWare water with a couple of games that have the novel feature of being played holding your DSi upside-down with the touchscreen at the top. This first one is based upon the classic Tekhan vertical shooter Star Force, which was one of the Virtual Console Arcade launch titles on the Wii. In both graphics and sound..

Budget puzzling from the budget DSiWare machine

We have to figure that Suzak is porting games they originally developed for mobile phones for the G.G. Series, because it just doesn't seem possible that they could have made so many games in so short a span of time and actually had this many of them turn out to be worthwhile. Energy Chain is a puzzle game and whilst we wouldn't necessarily call it..

"There's a super-man coming, there's a super-man coming..."

This entry in the G.G. Series is a nice little brawler with a superhero theme. As with other games in the series, there's no menu options to worry about, game modes or story: instead you just use the D-Pad and a couple of buttons to pound on some costumed freaks until they get the better of you. Stages have static backgrounds and are a few..

Capcom and Nichibutsu classics on Wii, Gameloft, G.G. Series and Kanji Training on DSi

DSiWare doesn't hold any surprises, but it's nice to see more VCA releases and of course Capcom fueling the retro-fires. WiiWareRockman 10 (1000pts - Capcom) — By now we hope everyone knows this is what we know as Mega Man 10 outside of Japan. We though it was a worthy successor to the franchise crown; no..

Alice in bullet-hell land

Genterprise has published a steady string of G.G. Series games for DSiWare, delivering some much needed arcade-style gaming at a budget price with the majority of games coming from development studio Suzak. Wonder Land is a bullet hell shooter based upon Alice in Wonderland – not exactly a logical pairing, but certainly an amusing one. The sprite-based graphics are sharp..

My little water demon

In case you don't know what a kappa is (and we certainly didn't until we first heard of this game), know that it is a mischievous water sprite from Japanese mythology prone to eating small children (and cucumbers – hence the "kappa maki" found in Japanese sushi restaurants); now residing on the DSi. A product of internal Nintendo studio Brownie Brown, Inc., Kappa..

Picross meets ... Quarth?

Nintendo seems to have single-handedly popularised picross on home and console game systems, with only Hudson daring to dabble in the same space. Continuing the tradition they've partnered with D4 Enterprise to bring a new faster-paced game to the DSi which combines traditional Picross with elements of Konami's old puzzle/shooter, Quarth. Instead of creating an image..

Lots of flash; not much substance

Nintendo isn't exactly known for publishing shooters, much less shooters of the "bullet hell" variety, but that's exactly what we have here. Developed by Arika and recently shown at the Nintendo Media event in North America as Metal Torrent, Aa Mujō Setsuna is certainly one of the most graphically impressive DSiWare games we've seen, but the gameplay is..

Hey, you got your Columns in my Quarth!

Fantasic Cube is very much an old-school puzzle game, but a decent one and more full-featured than most of the puzzlers we've seen lately. There are three single player game modes on offer and two-way multiplayer either locally or over Wi-Fi connection with friends or random strangers. The primary game mode is your typical Story Mode: the little witch girl..

Budget majaan on the go

Mahjong (or, as they call it in Japan, "majaan") is incredibly popular in Japan where you can find gambling parlours with fully automated tables shuffling, dealing and stacking tiles for players. It therefore should come as no surprise that there are a few mahjong games available in the Japanese DSiWare shop and Handy Mahjong is one of the cheapest available at..

Another light week for the Wii and the usual assortment for DSi to start the month off

Japan seems to have settled very much into a release schedule like other territories, which will hopefully send some green-eyed monsters off to bed (well, except Virtual Console fans). WiiWareAqualiving: Television de Nagameru Sakana Tachi (800pts - Nintendo) – Nintendo are finally getting in on the virtual..

Even Japan seems to be getting several VC-less weeks from now on.

Things are moderately bad for Virtual Console in Europe and North America at the moment, with each month having several weeks without a new release for the service. But now it's really time to worry - Even Japan seems to be getting several of these now. March only sees three new releases, and although two of those are from Nintendo..

Budget shooting on the go

Genterprise has published a lot of DSiWare in the past year, mostly as part of a budget line called G. G. Series. These are small arcade-style games with a 200 Point price tag which have caught the attention of many who read our weekly Japanese download news because we just aren't seeing this kind of thing elsewhere for some reason. Z・ONE is one of the first of these..

Another light release week, but a surprise VCA release takes us higher

This year Nintendo seems to be taking a more leisurely release pace than its overseas arms. Whilst this can be disappointing for importers, it certainly seems more fair and we have to think that game publishers will be happy to have less competition than in those massive release weeks gone by. WiiWareGyakuten Saiban 3 (1200pts -..